The Talk Of The Town (Post-Brown) -- The New Yorker's David Remnick Is A Departure From His Predecessor

What a gaffe.

The editor of one of the world's most important magazines is in town, staying at the luxury Sorrento Hotel, a nice opportunity for the management to show its stuff. But somehow, the editor of The New Yorker has been placed in the hotel's smallest room.

When editor David Remnick comes into the lobby, the hotel manager scoots up, introduces himself and apologizes. This is a mistake, Remnick is told. We will move you immediately.

Remnick waves him off with a smile.

"I don't care," Remnick says, in town to speak at the Seattle Arts & Lectures series. He says this even though he's in pain from a recent basketball injury - a hard floor met the lanky 40-year-old's back - and maybe a different bed might help. No, don't fuss over me, Remnick is saying.

It's hard to imagine a moment that better contrasts David Remnick with his predecessor, Tina Brown, who may well have been gracious about hotel glitches but was famous for wanting things done first class, expenses be damned, according to the New York gossip press.

Brown completely revitalized The New Yorker by bringing in new writers, letting others go, making the publication more current and readable. But in her push to make it part of the cultural buzz, some readers, and even some staff writers, found it vulgar and embarrassing, as if an elderly aunt had started wearing a miniskirt. Yet nobody could ignore it, which seemed to be part of Brown's goal.

Brown, who became editor in 1994, brought in ad pages and readers, but not profits, according to Fortune magazine. By the time she left last July, losses had totaled more than $175 million since the Newhouse family bought the publication in 1985.

Remnick's appointment - the online magazine Slate's editor, Michael Kinsley, was among the candidates who didn't get the job - stirred up the cultural world. The selection by billionaire S.I. Newhouse won praise from writers at the magazine, where Remnick was known for his graceful prose, prolific work habits (more than 100 pieces for the magazine), intelligence, sensitive reporting and pleasant personal style.

Remnick was known not as a showman, but as a writer, a reporter, a Pulitzer Prize winner (for the book "Lenin's Tomb"). In short, a serious guy.

Part of his purpose in town was to promote his latest book, the best-selling "King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero" (Random House, $25).

More than a sports book, "King of the World" tries to assess Ali as a cultural icon, how the boxer broke the imposed mold for black athletes and became "the most popular person on the planet."

Remnick tells the story with a prose that is at once learned, elegant and simple, a surprising but effective blend of cultural references. On one page, for example, Remnick says that famed boxing mentor Cus D'Amato "looked like a cross between the emperor Hadrian and Jimmy Cagney."

There will be fewer books ahead for Remnick as he concentrates the bulk of his time on The New Yorker, his first management job (with the possible exception of editing his high school paper). The magazine is famous for its quirky personalities, traditions and temperaments. "I've never been a boss," he says. "You need to be hyper-aware of people's needs and feelings."

He doesn't seem scared. There's a competitiveness that can be sensed under those pleasant manners. But he's sobered by the responsibility handed to him. "I think it's the greatest magazine that ever existed," he says.

What distinguishes The New Yorker from, say, Life has been its ability to remain vital, which no other magazine has done, he says.

The New Yorker began in 1925 as a sophisticate's humor publication, what Remnick calls a "fizzy champagne of a magazine," but evolved under editor William Shawn into a showcase for the best of literary journalism, as well as fiction, cartoons and short commentary.

Critics of Shawn's later years and of editor Robert Gottlieb's tenure said the magazine had become ponderous, the world's best unread publication. Brown made it a must-read publication, but sacrificed a measure of The New Yorker's taste.

While Brown made headlines for her lavish magazine promotional parties, Remnick says less of that is needed now. "Some of it was intended to get a jump-start. Bring attention. Mission accomplished. The New Yorker has no shortage of attention," he says.

Remnick will still do parties, especially the magazine's anniversary bash in February. In the magazine world, editors do that stuff.

"I will do anything I can to keep it healthy and make it healthier," he says. "To do otherwise wouldn't just be wrong, but would be a cultural sin. The New Yorker is essential. But when I wake up in the morning, is the first thing I want to do is go to a cocktail party? No."

Remnick promises editorial changes, but he will be faithful to the magazine's traditions.

"What will stay the same is the overall attempt to do everything we can to delight the reader, make him or her laugh, feel that they've learned something, be introduced to new voices," he says.

Since July, Remnick has brought in some new writers - a new art critic, a new movie critic and another European correspondent. He moved the "Shouts and Murmurs" commentary from the back page to inside, where there's room for longer pieces. He plans more New York coverage, but also to give more attention to other regions, including, he says, cities such as Seattle.

Despite the financial losses, Remnick doesn't feel pressure to compromise the magazine's journalism. He says he has lunch with Newhouse every other week and 95 percent of their conversation is about the contents of the magazine, not business matters.

Remnick is convinced that the magazine's losses, given its loyal readers, will be a "blip" in its long history. Putting out a great magazine, says Remnick, is the surest path to profits.

"To diminish quality by one iota would be the biggest mistake I could do, short of cutting cartoons," says Remnick, smiling. "The definition of suicide by a New Yorker editor is cutting cartoons."